


Jet Talk

by sierraraeck



Series: Aundreya Chambers [5]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Aaron Hotchner - Freeform, Angst, Aundreya Chambers, Behavioral Analysis Unit (Criminal Minds), Criminal Minds Family, David Rossi - Freeform, Derek Morgan - Freeform, Emily Prentiss - Freeform, F/M, FBI, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Original Female Character - Freeform, POV Original Female Character, Penelope Garcia - Freeform, Slow Burn, Spencer Reid - Freeform, Spencer Reid Angst, Spencer Reid Fluff, The BAU Team as Family (Criminal Minds), bau, jennifer jareau - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29185296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sierraraeck/pseuds/sierraraeck
Summary: Series Summary: This is a series following Aundreya Chambers and her experience with the BAU, Spencer, and trying to navigate the FBI as a high-profile criminal. And things get very messy.Chapter Summary: Now that the two of them are starting to get over their differences, they actually start working well together. On the jet ride home, they talk and play chess. Story five.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Original Female Character(s), The BAU Team/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Aundreya Chambers [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2130924
Kudos: 2





	Jet Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Just a reminder that this is all fiction and I don’t actually know anything about hair care chemicals.

So the back twitching had subsided. Ever since Spencer and I went to dinner, things were so much better. Work was better, and he and I actually started working together on all of the stuff that didn’t require field work, because I was still not cleared for that yet. Well, I was, then the people above Hotch found out that I had a personal phone, and postponed that privilege for another few weeks. Aaron tried to take partial responsibility but I wouldn’t let him. They looked through my phone history, and because it was all clear, they let me keep it as long as Garcia could continue to monitor it. That was fine with me. It was just another time to add to the list of ‘everyone-being-thankful-that-Garcia-is-a-tech-goddess’. 

But now that Spencer and I were, dare I say, kind of friends, working on cases was actually fun. I hadn’t had as much practice keeping up with him as everyone else did, but I felt like I was adjusting pretty well. I may not have had the education he or the rest of them did, but I definitely had the quick paced thinking skills. And if I do say so myself, I was getting pretty good at the geographical profile and picking out patterns in victimology since there was nothing else I was allowed to do. 

Reid came rushing into the precinct conference room that we’d been allowed to set up in, late to our lunch break because he got caught up with the ME.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, not even slowing down long enough to notice his food. He walked right over to the board where the picture of the third woman was just put up. 

“What do you got?” I asked, taking the finishing bite of my Lo Mein. 

“Woah, slow your roll. Give the man a moment to eat his crappy Chinese food,” Morgan said. Of all the people on the team, Spencer and I were the only ones who never complained about the food. Probably because mine was gone too fast and his wasn’t gone fast enough. Sometimes it wasn’t gone at all. 

“It’s okay I’m not hungry,” Reid said, turning to look at us. “The ME said that all three women had lethal levels of hydrogen peroxide and ammonia in their systems.”

“So the unsub forced it down their throats?” I suggested.

“That’s what I would assume considering the only other place they had traces of it was under their fingernails.”

“The only way it’d be under their fingernails is if they worked with it,” I stated. Everyone else was busy munching so that left Reid and I to fill the airspace. 

“That’s what I thought, but when I asked Garcia to pull up their work history, all she found was that they all used to work at salons years ago.”

“The same salon?”

“No. Completely different and not in the unsub’s target area,” he responded.

“Wait, but their houses are in the target area,” I said, an idea forming. 

“Right, but they were all killed away from their houses.”

“Sure, but these women had these chemicals under their nails for a reason. Both ammonia and hydrogen peroxide are ingredients in hair dye,” I said, my words picking up pace.

“So they had to have been using them at their homes,” Spencer said, realization dawning on him. “They were operating hair salons from out of their houses.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. The unsub could have gone to them to get their hair done, something triggered them-”

“And then they surprise-attacked them and quickly forced the chemicals down their throats.” Spencer finished, his words picking up pace as well.

“Exactly. We’ve got to be looking at a female unsub. Only women would visit salons this much, and killing her victims by chemical wouldn’t be hard for her to do. I mean, it would only take 500 ppm of ammonia and a swig of concentrated hydrogen peroxide to kill someone,” I said. JJ looked over at me, a questioning look on her face. “What? I may not have a PhD in chemistry but I know things.”

She raised her hands in surrender. 

“Plus, if she is surprise-attacking them, it wouldn’t be that difficult for her to overpower them long enough to get the chemicals down their throats.” I nodded at his words. “This unsub has to have some sort of background in cosmetology or chemistry to know how much of the chemicals to use along with the correlation to hair dye ingredients.”

“I agree. Don’t hairdressers have to have a license to work?” I asked.

“Yes, they do!” Spencer replied, quickly pressing the button that had Penelope’s number on speed-dial. “Garcia, can you compile a list for me?”

“Absolutely, my boy wonder. What do you need?” her cheery voice seeped from the phone like warm honey and spread throughout the room.

“I need you to compile a list of licensed hairdressers in the area who don’t work at salons, along with anyone who has a background in chemistry,” Spencer asked, his voice commanding. 

“Okey-dokey. That will be on your tablets shortly.”

“Thanks, Garcia.” Only seconds later our tablets were pinging. I swear to god that woman is a wizard.

“We need to start looking through these, one of them could potentially be our unsub,” Spencer said earnestly.

“Yeah, and the rest of them are her potential victims,” I pointed out. Spencer and I looked up from our tablets and made eye contact, nodding in agreement with each other. I’d been so caught up in our own little world of deductions that I hadn’t noticed the rest of the team staring at us. 

Slowly, Prentiss leaned over to Hotch and deliberately asked, “Do you know why the rest of us are even here?” I stifled a laugh and saw Reid look down to hide a smirk in my peripheral. We _had_ kind of run away with that one. Aaron just raised his eyebrows.

“Seriously. If the two of them are just going to do … _that_ from now on, what are the rest of us even here for?”

“That is a fantastic question,” Rossi answered, in his bored, dry humored tone. Spencer and I exchanged amused smiles, trying to shield them from the rest of the team. 

Emily sighed, holding out her hand in Spencer and I’s direction. “Would one of you geeks hand me my tablet?” Spencer and I just stood there, staring at her hand.

“Derek, that’s rude,” I said, snapping my fingers, forcing him to look at me, “Emily’s trying to talk to you.”

Emily snorted and Derek rolled his eyes. “Ha ha. Very funny, smartass.”

“Hey, just trying to keep it real.”

“We appreciate that,” JJ said, patting Morgan on the shoulder and winking at me on her way to grab her own tablet. He just shrugged her off.

* * *

We spent hours looking through those women until we found one that matched our profile, Hayley Morrison. We had initially skipped over her because she worked in a chemistry lab and didn’t seem to have any connection to cosmetology, but what drew our attention to her the second time around was that she’d been to the hospital several times as a child for chemical burns.

“You know, it’s interesting that out of all the chemicals our unsub could have chosen, she picked ammonia and hydrogen peroxide. There are plenty of other chemicals in hair dye she could have picked like resorcinol, lead acetate, toluene, and phenylenediamine. Not to mention all the chemicals she’d have access to working at a chemistry lab like arsenic, formaldehyde, mercury, bisphenol, fluoride, lead, methyl alcohol, cyclohexane, and many others she could have easily gotten her hands on. It’s actually really interesting because those two chemicals would…” Spencer rambled, before cutting himself off after he realized that the team was just gaping at him. The volume of his voice dramatically dropped, “Sorry. I can go into more detail if you’d like.”

“No, we’re good-”

“Yes,” I said. Everyone’s attention whipped toward me as I said it, shock and even slight horror taking over their features. Now, I’ve been viewed as a crazy person before, but these people looked at me like I needed an immediate lobotomy. “Okay, wow. Don’t all stab me at once,” I commented, my eyes wide. Spencer looked like he’d been shot with a tranquilizer. I was so confused because I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Clearly that was wrong. 

“What did you just say?” Morgan asked me.

“I said-”

“No. Fairly certain you said no,” he cut me off. The rest of the team nodded and I just squinted my eyes at them.

“Actually I said yes. I’d love to hear more. But considering our time crunch,” I turned to Reid, “why don’t you just tell me about it on the jet?”

“Uh, what? Sure,” Reid floundered coming out of his daze, brows still furrowed. I never completed high school, didn’t even make it through the first semester of my freshman year, so there were a lot of basic things I was missing out on. Not like I needed all that information for anything, but regardless I wanted to learn more. What better way than to have the resident genius explain all of the things he knows (that by the way are coming in handy in our line of work) to me? Plus, the guy needed someone to listen to him rant, otherwise I was convinced his brain would implode from never getting to relieve any of the pressure stemming from all that knowledge. I was willing to be a pair of ears, another fine social skill I’d learned on the streets.

“Cool. Make a mental note of this chemical talk in that eidetic memory of yours and we’ll come back to it.”

“That’s not actually how eidetic memories work,” Spencer corrected me.

“Great. You can educate me on that in the jet as well,” I said with a wink. Spencer gave me his signature small smile, just like the one he did after the whole Kristy thing. 

* * *

Come to find out, Hayley’s mother worked as an at-home hairdresser and forced her to make home-made hair dye with harmful chemicals using her bare hands. It wrecked the skin on her hands and forearms for the rest of her life, so we figured she was killing surrogates for her mother. Unfortunately we couldn’t put it together fast enough before we had to add a fourth picture to our board. When we found Hayley, she was in a secondary lab she created in her garage, and was in the process of mixing the two chemicals together, about to up her count to five. Instead of running or getting detained, she swallowed the mixture herself. Luckily, we got her to a hospital in time.

As we boarded the jet, I made sure to stay right behind Spencer so I could snatch up the seat next to him. When I sat down, he gave me a weird look.

“What?” I asked.

“I honestly didn’t think you were serious,” he replied.

“I am. As long as you want to talk about it, I want to listen to it.”

“Actually?”

“Deadass.”

“Hey Chambers,” Derek called across the plane, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I always do,” I clapped back.

“Alright. Your eardrums,” he teased, followed by a quick raise of the eyebrows at Spencer. I just brushed it off. 

“So tell me all about chemicals and eidetic memories.” 

And he did. He spilled so much information that if it were tangible, I’d have to spend the rest of the _week_ cleaning up the jet. At first I didn’t want to interrupt him to ask questions, but I soon realized that he enjoyed answering them and helping me understand what the hell he was talking about. I’m not going to lie, I was still pretty confused about the whole chemicals thing by the end, but he looked so giddy sharing everything he knew about it that I was okay with that. The eidetic memory stuff made more sense to me, though. Or maybe I was just trying harder to understand it. 

After an hour and a half of Q&A, he ran out of facts to tell me.

“There’s no way,” I teased. “Did I really run you dry of all your chemical and memory facts?”

“It looks like it,” he smiled at me. I hadn’t realized it being completely immersed in his talking, but my back was cramping from sitting completely perpendicular to the chair so that I could face him head on. I quickly cracked my back and neck with loud, satisfying pops. 

“Ew. That does not sound healthy,” Emily said as she walked by us on her way to get coffee.

“Despite popular belief, it’s actually not that bad for you. It’s basically like being your own chiropractor,” Spencer answered for me. We both waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.

Emily gave him a questioning look, “No more? No stats or fun facts?”

He shook his head.

“Damn, girl. I underestimated you. You really did a number on him,” Prentiss accused.

I shrugged. “I didn’t do anything except listen and ask occasional questions. He wore himself out.”

“Eh, that sounds about right,” she nodded, returning back to her seat.

“What now? We’ve still got three plus hours to kill,” I asked. I didn’t want to sleep because then I wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night once we landed.

“Not sure. Do you want coffee?” he offered. 

“No thanks,” I said, getting out of my chair to let him out. He slid past me and I switched to the seat across from his. I’d never been a fan of coffee. I didn’t do soda either so the only way I ever got caffeine was through tea, but that didn’t happen often either. I’d rather just run off of natural energy. I looked around for something to do since neither of us were going to be sleeping anytime soon and found a small travel chess set. 

I’d always been a fan of chess. I played all the time with my grandfather, then played with Rafael, the Cloaks’ leader, and picked it back up at the end of my prison days. I had just started setting it up when Reid sat back down.

“You know how to play chess?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ve played all my life. I was actually in the chess club in elementary school,” I laughed. I hadn’t thought about those days in a long time. 

“Oh really? That’s so cool,” I could tell there was a hint of skepticism in his voice.

“What?”

He gave a small laugh. “It’s just that you don’t really strike me as the nerdy chess club type.”

“Oh that’s because I wasn’t. I was the _dominating_ chess club type,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“Is that so?”

“Yep.”

“Alright. I’d be willing to bet that I can change that,” he challenged, leaning in, the intensity of his eye contact increasing.

“I’m sure you can, Doctor Genius. Let’s see it,” I accepted.

“White commences the game,” he stated, gesturing for me to go ahead. I made my first move. He feigned a grimace.

“Oh come on. Don’t try and play mind games with me. It’s not going to work,” I pointed out. 

“Worth a shot. It works on Morgan and JJ,” he said. I laughed as he made his move. 

About fifty moves and forty minutes later, I was in checkmate. 

“Dammit,” I said.

“If it makes you feel any better, that’s one of the longest games I’ve ever played.”

“Really?” I was shocked. 

“Yeah. On average it only takes me about 25 minutes to beat someone. Our game was 40. And you took me to the average 50 moves per game, usually I’m sitting at about 20.”

“Cool. I’m glad I could provide you some sort of a challenge,” I said. “So have you ever lost?”

“Yes. I lost to Gideon, my old mentor, many times before I could beat him. He actually taught me a lot about the strategy,” His voice was sad and pensive. I knew the two of them were close, that’s why I wasn’t surprised by his next question. “How did you know Gideon?”

“Do you remember when I told you that the Storefront Slaughterer burnt our apartment down?”

He nodded.

“Well, I was the most paranoid out of the three of us, so I kept one of my old softball bats by my bed. When I heard my bedroom door open that night, I put a hand on it before I even saw who it was. When he tried to yank me out of bed, something my mom and sister knew better than to do, I hit him with it. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or not, but he was definitely unconscious for the time being. I ran to my mom and sister’s rooms and saw that they were already dead,” I swallowed. I’d told this story many times and re-lived it twice as much. I felt a general sense of detachment at this point, but having to say the words of confirmation always shook me a little.

“I don’t remember how long I stood there in disbelief, but however long, it was too long. Long enough for him to regain consciousness and return the favor. I must have dropped the bat in the midst of everything because he hit me with it. He hit the side of my head, and for good measure, broke my femur in my right leg. He told me that I didn’t deserve to die as quickly as they did. That I deserved to slowly burn alive or suffocate from the smoke. He got up and left, leaving me in a daze. I was going to give up. I was. I had made the decision, lying between my mother and my sister that we were all going to die together. I don’t know what changed my mind. It could have been the intense heat, the pain from my leg, or the fact that I was slowly losing the ability to breathe. But for some reason, I decided to get up and fight. I walked to the door but it was too hot so my only way out was the window. I jumped five stories down, which honestly should have killed me or shattered my spine, but it didn’t. It left me winded with three broken ribs and mostly unconscious. That’s when I met Gideon. 

“I don’t really remember what happened, but he later told me that I’d been there for an hour, slowly bleeding out before he got to me. I jumped out a window on the back of the building and landed behind a giant dumpster and it was dark, so I wasn’t exactly easy to spot. He told me that the only thing I said to him before I slipped completely under was, ‘help me disappear.’ He called a paramedic over to treat me, but he wouldn’t let them take me to the hospital, which I was grateful for. He made one of them get in the backseat of his car with me as he drove me back to his house. I stayed there and recovered for the next few months during which he told me all about his team and their extensive process to track this guy. I told him that I couldn’t stay there and I wouldn’t go back to my father so he helped me change my identity. I thanked him for everything he’d done for me when I left for the streets, and we agreed to keep in touch. We did, all the way up until he left the bureau. He and Aaron consulted me a few times in prison, but other than that, he didn’t visit. He didn’t even bother to come see me in person when he decided to cut all ties, which I don’t blame him for, but all I got was a letter that just showed up one day in my cell.” Spencer’s whole mood shifted when I said that, his eyes getting bigger.

“He left you a letter too?” he asked. _Too?_ I was shocked. _Gideon left him a letter?_

“Yeah. We hadn’t been in contact for ages and then one day a letter just showed up in my cell, telling me that it was his turn to disappear and not to look for him. You got one too?”

“Yes,” was all I got. It must have been a painful memory because I could tell he didn’t want to elaborate. 

“Well, anyway, I have him to thank for my life and the rest of the BAU for listening to me when I sent in that tip.” We were silent for a while, thinking about Gideon and what he must be doing now.

“Why’d he ask you not to look for him?”

“I’d assume it’s because he knew that I was either going to get out, or gain enough connections that I could. I mean, I was one of the best private investigators, and he wanted to be left alone. He knew I’d respect his wishes, but only if he directly told me them.”

He nodded. 

“Okay, enough of that. Wanna play again?” I asked. 

“You sure you want to get beat twice in a row?” he asked, a little bit of pep coming back into his words. I answered by making my first move.

* * *

About 15 minutes before landing, the rest of the team started slowly waking up. Reid and I were on game number five. Gasp, I’d lost the previous four. But a few moves later, I had him in checkmate. I sat back, squinting my eyes, and stared at him with my best bitchface.

“Woah, what’s going on here?” Morgan asked as he walked by on his way to finish the last bit of coffee, able to sense the tension. I didn’t answer, I just crossed my arms and kept staring at Reid.

“I’m not sure. She’s just been staring at me like that,” he answered.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“It looks to me like she’s got you in checkmate-”

“Bullshit,” I interrupted, still totally focused on Spencer. Both of them furrowed their brow. “He let me win.”

Derek quickly turned to walk away mumbling something about not getting involved, but Spencer said, “That’s not true.”

“How many games have we played?”

“Five.”

“Is that how much you think my ego is worth? Five games?” He just gave me a confused look. “Listen up Doctor Genius. I don’t have a fragile ego and I know that you let me win. After the first four games, I started to get a feel for how you played, and I know that you wouldn’t have made those last two moves if you actually wanted to win. So let me tell you this. I want to beat you, but I actually want to earn it. It may take me 100 games, maybe more, but I _will_ beat you and it will be because I actually outplayed you. I can’t do that if you go easy on me and I don’t actually get a feel for how your mind works. I enjoy a challenge and am not just going to break or give up because I’m losing. I want to learn from you, which I thought was obvious after I suggested you tell me everything you didn’t get to share while working the case. So do me a favor. Don’t _ever_ go easy on me.” He started to smile and gave me a single, but definite, nod. 

“Fantastic. So let’s reset the board to where it was a few moves ago, and why don’t you beat me like a _true_ genius.”


End file.
